on Edward Estlin Cummings

Biography Essay

E. E. Cummings's experimentation with form and language places him among the most innovative of twentieth-century poets. His style eludes specific association with any one modern line. He was applauded by such various poets as Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Robert Graves, Laura Riding, Alien Tate, Theodore Roethke, and Louise Bogan, but he remained peripheral to contemporary poetic movements. He was one of the earliest modern poets (Guillaume Apollinaire and Mina Loy preceded him) to introduce typographical eccentricities into writing. His dazzling linguistic risk taking was in fact painstakingly measured to control sound—pacing, syllable stress, juncture—and sight. The intricate spatial patterning led Marianne Moore to describe his poems as "a kind of verbal topiary-work." The strong visual character of Cummings's writing owes much to his parallel development as a painter. Indeed, his dismemberment of syntax derived from the advances in...